Doc Rock's diagnosis: "You've been smokin' way too many fans"

Fanning out for a full frontal attack...

(Image from Wikipedia)

Yeah, fan death again! No sooner do I deal effectively with some disbeliever or other, but another one pops up -- almost before I can catch my breath!

A certain 'Doc Rock' -- whose name sounds like a queer marriage of irreconcilable differences from DC and Marvel comics (along with Doc Savage in a ménage à trois?) -- rejects my arguments for the truth of fan death. Like most such disbelievers, his opening shot is a bit of ad hominem:

You've been smokin' way too many fans, I think.

He thinks? And what sort of 'thought' is this? While electric fans can overheat and smoke -- and that's another of the many dangers that they pose -- to suggest that I've actually been smoking electric fans is surely the most absurd charge laid against me and my defense of fan death. How, pray tell, does one (in the transitive sense of the word) 'smoke' a fan? We're not talking here of those paltry hand fans that folks wave about in a futile attempt to cool themselves down as they heat themselves up. A paper fan of that sort could, I acknowledge, be ground up into tiny bits and smoked, and if the paper were made from the plant Cannabis sativa, then Doc Rock's personal attack might have a point.

But no, we're talking here of electric fans. Fan made of plastic and steel. Who in his or her right mind would ever attempt to smoke such machinery? Does Doc Rock think that I'm crazy!? Am I being accused of lunacy by yet another fan death skeptic? But let's see what else the good doctor has to say:

I'm 66 and grew up without airconditioning. We had fans in every room and slept with doors CLOSED!!!! I have fans in almost every room in my house and we are all still going. The only basis for this insanity is the power of urban legend and the paucity of science education.

Sixty-six? Really? Does the photo here look like that of a 66-year-old man? Not to my eyes -- nor, I suspect, to your own.

Be that as it may, for the doctor's information, I also grew up without air conditioning -- and a good thing, too, for every air conditioner comes equipped with a fan! There's really no difference, scientifically, between using a fan and using an air conditioner. Both can kill you.

But let's consider Doc Rock's other points. He claims to have grown up with fans in every room. Really? Does that include closets? They are also rooms. And was every single door truly closed? Tightly? And sealed? If fans were not really on in every room, and if every room were not truly closed and sealed airtight, then the fans' effect and the Doc's argument are both seriously weakened. Note that he even admits that these days, he only has "fans in almost every room" (emphasis mine). Almost is not every! And why not every room? Does the doctor perhaps, subconsciously, in fact recognize the grave danger? Yet even if not on in every room, those fans nevetheless pose a threat to the health of him and his family. Illness can strike at any moment, even to those who brag that they are "still going" even as their fans are still going.

And at this point in his argument, Doc Rock's better judgement takes over, for concerning his own practice of having a house full of fans going full blast, he says:

"The only basis for this insanity is the power of urban legend and the paucity of science education."

I agree with the doctor's self-diagnosis. Having fans on in almost every room in one's house is insane. I was unaware of any urban legends about the harmlessness of having so many fans running (are their whirling blades supposed to set up interference patterns that cancel each other out?), but the doctor is surely right about "the paucity of science education" that lies behind people's ignorance of fan death. Americans are prescientific compared to Koreans, who attain some of the highest math and science scores in the world and who lead the world in such cutting-edge scientific research as cloning technology. Should we be surprised, then, when Koreans are the first to recognize the dire, indeed fatal effects of fans?

Fan death. A scientific fact established in Korea.